Talk:Ezreal/@comment-26459891-20150614125822/@comment-4636093-20150625115648
There is actually a major issue with on him, I've been using it many times since yesterday. (Not a lot but enough to get a good idea of how it plays out.) Firstly it comes down to the summoner spell you need to take. Red Smite can indeed replace Ignite in a huge amount of situations, up to level 12 the true damage it can deal is more than Ignite and any loss of damage from level 13 onwards isn't very much, and also Smite has a tiny 15 second cooldown if you have both charges and still more than a third of Ignite's cooldown if you only have 1 charge ready, it also grants 20% damage reduction from the person you smite, and in addition to this an extra smite on the team will help you secure buffs and dragons. So that's quite a lot of advantages, but the main disadvantage is (other than the lack of healing reduction which is only minor in most matchups)... well... your summoner spell now costs money. You need to pay 850 gold in order to get your summoner spell, meanwhile a LichBane+Ignite Ezreal doesn't. So you do need to buy early otherwise you're down a summoner spell. Meanwhile Runeglaive itself is absolutely horrendous early game. Lich Bane wasn't a very good item to get early on before, but Runeglaive is completely unusable before you get at least 2 other items and it's still bad until you get 4. Everything useful about Runeglaive is stored in its passives, the Sheen Proc and the Smite bonus. The item costs you 2250 gold total meanwhile the actual stats it gives are pathetic, 40AP 200Mana and 10%CDR for an endgame item. That's very nearly the lost of an item slot. Pros of Runglaive over Lich Bane: *Gives Ezreal some pretty good AoE waveclear (2 Qs can clear the caster minions in a wave and another 3 for the melees). *Gives Ezreal unified damage output which can be better when the opponent picks up armor to counter the other people on your team. *You'll always have enough mana to cast spells, just Q a jungle camp a few times. *An extra smite on the team to help secure dragons, barons and blue buffs. *Q now procs Luden's Echo while it doesn't otherwise. *Challenging Smite gives more damage than Ignite for most of the game and about equal damage for the rest of it. *Challenging Smite grants 20% damage reduction from your lane opponent which will completely destroy your enemy in duels. *Challenging Smite can be spammed twice within 15 seconds and has a 75 second cooldown otherwise. *Chilling Smite if you decide to go for that instead gives Ezreal a small amount of CC and a speed boost which can help when you're getting ganked heavily by someone who can gank even through your E such as Xin Zhao or Gragas. *An extra 10% CDR is always nice. *Before you get your smite upgrade you can secure cannon minions in lane with Smite which I guess counts as a positive. Cons of Runeglaive over Lich Bane: *Need to dump 850 gold before you get access to your summoner spell. *Runeglaive becomes effective after 3-4 items compared to Lichbane becoming effective after 1-2. *Slight lack of raw burst damage. *Hybridized damage is better early on before the opponent is building armor. *Runeglaive utterly sucks when it comes to endgame stats. *No more healing reduction from ignite. *Ignite is simpler to use (Just click it on them and it's cast on them, Challenging Smite requires you to click it on them then auto attack them for 4 seconds to get the max damage). It also doesn't require foresight, when someone gets low you ignite them and they die, but you need to smite them when you start the combat in order to make use of it. TL;DR: Taking Runeglaive is an option you can take, however it completely messes up Ezreal's powerspikes. Heavily stunts him early game AND takes away an endgame itemslot in exchange for waveclear and midgame potency.